


i wanna run away with you

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, LITERALLY, M/M, Post-Canon, Queerplatonic Relationships, Sharing a Bed, they're on a ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 00:09:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16459712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: “I think I’d be a third wheel on an elopement,” Hamid said.“It’s not an elopement,” Christine said. “Raoul and I aren’t getting married. We’re just getting away.”Or, the one where the Daroga joins the "running off to Sweden" gang.





	i wanna run away with you

The newspapers said that Raoul, Vicomte de Chagny, had murdered his brother for the love of Miss Christine Daae, hetaera opera singer. They added that he had been assisted in this task by a man of Persian origin, one Hamid, no last name given.

“I didn’t know your name was Hamid,” Christine said, handing the newspaper over to Raoul.

The Daroga, Hamid, shrugged. His brow was furrowed.

_You’ve brought another person into your troubles_ , Christine thought miserably. No. It was all Erik’s fault. Still.

“I’ll talk to the ship captain,” Raoul said. “I can get a little more money for my family. If we share a room I’m sure I can convince him to take on one more passenger.”

“I wouldn’t want you to spend your money on me. I do know how to get myself out of a fix.”

“You saved us,” Raoul said.

“I believe Miss Daae had more to do with the saving of us all—of Paris, even—than I.”

Raoul blushed. “Well, I would be happy if you would accompany us. We have little experience traveling…and besides, you are good company.”

They’d been holing out in Hamid’s apartment for the past day and a half. It seemed a bit precipitous to make judgments of his character so fast. But Christine did not object, though she did look at Raoul and raise her eyebrows, which only made him blush harder.

“I think I’d be a third wheel on an elopement,” Hamid said.

“It’s not an elopement,” Christine said. “Raoul and I aren’t getting married. We’re just getting away.”

They used to talk about it when they were young, even, about living together one way or another, in a cottage like M. Daae’s or in a manor like Raoul’s or in a castle like in M. Daae’s fairy tales. Never marrying, always living happily ever after. They had a basic understanding of how the world worked back then. Lately they’d allowed their lives to get more complicated, but Christine was ready to go back to simple.

Hamid looked from one to the other. At last he said, “Well, I suppose I have no better plans. But I will give you some of the money, monsieur. I have plenty stored away, and I need not be at your charity. And I am not so sure it is a good idea for you to keep contacting your family.”

Raoul protested, but the argument was brief. Hamid could be very decisive. Perhaps he really would be a useful man to have along. Raoul liked him at least. Christine thought she would still have to get to know him better.

* * *

 

A week or so into the voyage, Raoul got himself a black eye. Christine obtained a cold rag and watched him to make sure he kept it over his face. He was still scowling fiercely and if given half a chance would probably storm right back up on deck and start the fight all over again.

“Raoul, for God’s sake. Don’t get into fights for my sake. It’s…”

“I can’t just let them talk about you that way,” Raoul insisted. It had been an insinuation about what she did with Raoul and Hamid at night, since they all shared one room and they hadn’t bothered to lie about Christine being married to either of them.

Christine said, “I don’t care what they say. I care much more about you not getting yourself killed.”

Her voice perhaps came out a bit harshly. Raoul looked at the ground and muttered, “I’m sorry to worry you.”

Hamid, who was sitting on Raoul’s other side, said, “He is not entirely wrong, though, madam. If they are allowed to see you as a woman of loose virtue, and they think your travelling companions don’t care for you, these sailors could be quite a menace.”

Raoul nodded.

“Not that I’m excusing you,” Hamid added, putting a hand on Raoul’s shoulder. “You have a hot temper, monsieur. We will be travelling with these people for several weeks—it’s better not to get on their bad side.”

“What would you do then?” Raoul said.

“Defend her verbally. Make sure we are by her side whenever possible. And if someone starts getting aggressive, let me know before you start a fight, and you won’t be outnumbered three to one.”

“So now the both of you are going to start brawling?” Christine cut in. She put her hands on her hips. “I would have thought you’d learned better than to protect me from…”

“Madam, rest assured I will not step back from protecting a lady.”

“I haven’t learned a thing,” Raoul said hotly. “You’re the one who’s gotten…”

“No more of this!” Christine shook a finger. “ _No more_. I didn’t ask you to be my martyr.”

They glared at each other. Hamid cleared his throat. “I am sure we can manage to protect your honor without getting ourselves killed or beaten, madam. Calm yourself. A crew of lewd sailors are hardly as large a threat as Erik.”

He put a hand on her back. It was maybe the first time he’d touched her except to brush against her—it was oddly comforting. Maybe this was why in the past week she’d seen Raoul crowding around him so much, leaning against him or patting his arm. He certainly had presence.

She also liked how he said the name: Erik. Not _the Phantom_ , not _the Ghost_. Just Erik. He didn’t even say it with the level of angry fear that Raoul did; he was entirely frank. Erik was human to him. It made her think of the couple of times Erik had mentioned him to her, always a bit caustic, complaining on how the Daroga was meddling lately. What lay between those two was surely a mystery, and quite probably they had been friends. It should have frightened her, maybe, to be around someone who had been on intimate terms with her former captor. But Hamid wasn’t frightening. Rather, he was understanding.

They talked a little further about how to conduct themselves in the future, scolding Raoul in turns until he turned away from them and sulked. The cold rag did some good—when the bruise formed later, it was not quite as bad as it might have been, though it was still rather ugly.

Raoul bemoaned it. “I look like some schoolboy jumped by bullies on the way down the street. How pathetic.”

“Not at all.” Hamid turned Raoul to face him and gently touched his cheek, not quite touching the black eye. “It’s manly to have bruises and scrapes sometimes. Shows you aren’t afraid of a fight. Better to have scars, of course. I have quite a few.”

Raoul’s eyes widened. “Do you? If you don’t mind my asking, monsieur…”

He was very quickly sidetracked. Christine noticed that while Hamid took his hand away from Raoul’s cheek, it came to rest on his shoulder, keeping Raoul close. Raoul didn’t seem to notice.

Hm.

* * *

 

They shared a room for the simplest reason possible: it was all the captain had offered them for the money they paid. It was a small room, too. It had one cot and a hammock that rocked even more than the ship did already. A chair in the corner. Room for their suitcases. No desk or bedside table, barely enough room for them all.

The cot had room for two, barely.Who shared it depended on the night. Hamid and Raoul were the most sensible combination, and Hamid offered, but Christine and Raoul knew each other and knew each other well enough that they didn’t mind the difference of sex—they’d been children together, after all, and besides, Christine knew how Raoul felt about her, about women in general. She knew it was safe.

Frankly, they felt safer in each other’s arms than alone. Christine had become afraid of the dark in the past month, and there was no table on which to keep a lamp. If she could have Raoul near her—his touch, his smell, the sound of him breathing—she knew it was all right, and she was not alone. She needed that. And judging by how often she woke to find him curled around her, he needed that too.

They figured they were doing Hamid a favor, giving him the hammock to himself. And he didn’t object. Then one night when she couldn’t fall asleep she heard him muttering uneasily. She slid out of bed and shook him awake. He hoarsely whispered something in Persian, and she said, “It’s Christine.”

“Christine,” he said. When he was fully awake he usually called her “madam” or “Miss Daae.”

“Were you dreaming of Erik?” she asked quietly. Raoul was still asleep.

“Not the way you’re imagining,” he responded. “Though he was there.”

She could barely make out his outline in the dark, but she could feel and hear his movements in the air beside her as he sat up and ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry to have woken you,” he said.

“I was awake.” She hesitated. “Would you like to…”

She talked him into the cot, though it took some doing. He seemed sure he was robbing her of her slumber. But truthfully, she slept all right in the hammock. Somehow comforting him had comforted her, and she could feel his and Raoul’s presence near even if not quite as close as before.

After that they changed things up regularly. To be fair, Christine and Hamid rarely slept together—she still didn’t know him all that well. But sometimes Raoul and Hamid did, sometimes Raoul and Christine, and on especially bad nights, all of them at once. The cot should have broken, and it was a terrible squeeze, knees and anklebones and hips all jutting against each other. Still, she never really minded somehow.

* * *

 

She wrote letters.

The theoretical recipients varied. Some were to Meg, who had just begun to romanticize what they were before Christine left. Those were letters of apology— _I’m sorry, sweetheart, but you know Paris isn’t the place for me anymore_. Not entirely sincere apologies. She hadn’t been completely honest with Meg in a while. It was too late to try to fix things between them now.

One to Carlotta. _I’m sorry about Piangi_. That one she never finished. The others she might have sent, in theory, but this one would have only made Carlotta bitterer. There was no point.

Several to Philippe. Those she dropped off the side of the ship, where they might reach the afterlife. The papers said he’d drowned—the delivery would get to him somehow, she was sure, and water might be best.

A couple to Raoul’s family that was left behind. These she really might send once they got to Sweden. She knew he was struggling to figure out what to say to them, and if left to his own devices he might never get in touch. And if that happened they might even become convinced he really was a murderer. No, best not to leave that in his hands. When they got to Sweden…Well. Best not to plan too far ahead.

The time she spent in solitude, Raoul and Hamid seemed to be spending together. When she emerged from their room she would find them leaning against the rail together, staring out at the sea. But they never minded when she joined. In the evenings they played cards and Hamid tried to convince them to try one of his cigarettes. He had brought as many packs with him as he could, sure they would be hard to get in Sweden.

“Better save them for yourself, then,” Raoul said.

“A man who’s never had a good cigarette has not experienced life fully,” Hamid said.

“Well, we already get the scent off you, don’t we?”

Hamid looked over at Christine, who just raised her eyebrows. Raoul’s obvious maneuvers were none of her business. She would remain uninvolved.

So Hamid shrugged. “Fine then, monsieur, if you say so. Are you done shuffling yet, or do you need someone else to take a turn?”

“I am almost done,” Raoul said waspishly. He did one final bridge, annoyedly showmanlike, neatened the deck, and dealt.

He was very good at shuffling, and very bad at playing. His poker face was abysmal.

“If we were playing for money, I’d own the de Chagny estate by now,” Christine said as the evening drew to a close.

Raoul huffed. “Hamid would own half of it.”

Hamid smiled a quiet smile. He collected the cards together, then took Raoul’s hand and gently placed the deck in it. Raoul’s hand stayed where it was for a moment after Hamid pulled away—then he put the cards away and sighed. “I will learn your tricks eventually.”

“You’re just a bad liar,” Christine said. “But there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Raoul sighed again, tragically, and rubbed his eyes. “I’m just tired. Another night I’ll do better.”

“See? That was a lie.”

Raoul gave her a look. Hamid chuckled.

* * *

 

Truthfully, Christine never planned on going back to Sweden when she left. It was the land of her father. The land of the dead. And her father was not even interred there, but at Perros Guirec, so there was no reason to return at all. What could be there for her but ghosts?

She would not have returned, even when Raoul told her to return for her own safety. She had thought when they ran from Erik together they might go to the French countryside; their plans were not fully formed as yet.

But when Raoul became a wanted man, when she knew that he would need refuge, she knew, suddenly and clearly, that Sweden, and her family home there, now had a purpose. And she knew that she would not mind going back after all.

_Loneliness_ , she thought. She had always thought Sweden would be a place of loneliness to her now. That was why she had been in Paris, too, singing and dancing and making merry. One stayed around crowds. One tried to fill up the time and the space one’s loved ones left behind.

But now she thought about how she could furnish the house left behind to suit three people, whether they would share one bedroom or two or three, how they would stop the neighbors from talking scandal, whether it would be prudent to marry in name only or no, how they would make ends meet, how they might even divide chores…her mind filled with a million practical household concerns. The concerns of a family, not of a single woman. Not of a woman alone.

She did not know what Sweden might hold for her but she knew she did not fear it anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> It's really late at night and I should not be writing fics but  
> listen guys the daroga should have gone to Sweden with Raoul and Christine  
> also. I started writing this with some vague sexuality headcanons so I'd be interested to see if you guys picked up on them? They're not so different from ones I've had in the past but I also think it's kind of ambiguous here so. I'm curious.  
> comments and kudos are much loved. I'm going to bed now. Good night.


End file.
